The mission of the Clinical and Translational Research Infrastructure Network (CTR-IN) is to increase the quantity, quality, and NIH funding of clinical and translational research thereby accelerating the translation of scientific discovery to improved health in the region. We will accomplish this by expanding the regional collaboration and partnerships initiated by the Mountain West Research Consortium (MWRC, please see detailed description in Section 1). The efforts of the Administrative Core, and the two supervisory bodies it will support: the Internal Advisory Committee and the External Advisory Committee, will be to further this mission. Our Policies and Procedures will be established ~ and then modified based on experience and advice through a strategic planning process as the CTR-IN evolves ~ to support this mission. Our IDeA-CTR project will be designed to address issues that are unusual, in some ways novel, for an enterprise of this kind; we have many and varied partner institutions and programs, each with individual strengths and needs, distributed across an area that represents 32.5% of the entire land mass of the US. Thus, our programs cannot be one size fits all, they must be flexible in drawing resources from institutions where expertise is strong, and delivering resources and services where they are needed and can be most effective. We will achieve this by including every participating institution represented on our Internal Advisory Committee by a high level administrator (Vice President for Research level or equivalent). A primary guiding principle is that the CTR-IN must provide appropriate resources and services to increase clinical and translational research at each of the participating institutions, and that it not simply benefit a few. Through this approach we will develop regional competence and strength in areas fundamental to participation in clinical translational research at a level that will allow us to make meaningful contributions to the scientific literature and clinical practice leveraging the varied populations, cultures, and environments of this unique area of huge open spaces, sparse settlement, and environmental extremes.